Speaker 1: Hello, everybody. My name is Kaylee Harsh, and for this presentation, I will be sharing my personal experience with learning a language. I'm a native English speaker, and my journey of speaking Spanish started when I was in seventh grade. I went to a very small school, and the only two language options that were available at the time were Spanish and Seneca. I chose to learn Spanish and studied it from seventh grade until my senior year of high school. My senior year, I took a college credit Spanish course and passed, which meant I did not need to take a foreign language credit here at college. In general, learning Spanish and the ways it was presented to me in the classroom was very easy. I got straight A's in all of my Spanish courses and felt comfortable with my abilities to be able to read, write, and speak in small conversations. Unfortunately, since coming to college, I have not kept up my skills in learning Spanish, and I have seen a very sharp decline in my understanding of the language. This leads me to question why that is and how the ways that Spanish was taught to me in school might have affected this. Next, we will be taking a look at the connectionist theory, as I believe much of my education was focused on this type of approach. The connectionist theory proposes that after hearing language features in specific situational or linguistic contexts over and over again, learners develop a stronger and stronger network of connections between these elements, as stated by authors Lightbound and Spada in their book How Languages Are Learned. Essentially, this theory explains that languages are learned through exposure to that language and through making connections in the different networks of the brain. My teachers in school always exposed us to a lot of listening activities. They would speak in Spanish as much as possible throughout the class, read us passages in Spanish, and have us engage in meaningful conversation with our peers. These were all efforts to expose us to the language and help us to be able to learn the rules of the language through that exposure. But, just as this theory supposes that through exposure, networks are strengthened in the brain, I would be willing to argue that with less exposure of that language, the network connections will lose their strength and retention of the language structures will be lost over time. This is similar to how negative and positive thinking happens in our brain. When we consistently think negative thoughts, channels in our brain start to form and our brains are more likely to return to those channels in the future. However, if your brain is no longer supporting the negative thought pattern channels, and instead, for example, starts to create positive thought pattern channels, the negative channels will start to disappear. I rarely ever engage in Spanish conversations in my everyday life, and therefore, my brain is not making connections to support my learning and retention of the language. Information processing is another theory in which my education was undoubtedly based. According to Lightbound and Spada, proponents of the information processing model, see second language acquisition as the building up of knowledge that can eventually be called on automatically for speaking and understanding. An example of this would be an English speaker saying dog and knowing exactly what it means without having to think about it. As well as this, Lightbound and Spada say there is a limit to how much a learner can pay attention to at once. In my education, I know this was certainly the case many times, because so much information was thrown at us in such a short period of time. After all, teachers have a time frame in specific units they have to get through. I know there were instances where I would use incorrect grammar or structure in my sentences because I wasn't able to process all the different elements I needed to understand. I know especially during listening activities, I would be more focused on getting the gist of what was being said than focusing on correct grammar and structure of the sentences. Blackstone states that transfer appropriate processing is information is best retrieved in situations that are similar to those in which it was acquired. This would make sense as to why I no longer am able to understand a lot of the language that I would have been able to in high school, because I'm no longer in Spanish classroom settings. Since retrieving information is much more easily done when you are in the setting in which the learning occurred, it would make sense that I'm not able to easily retrieve the information. Next, the sociocultural theory also connects to my Spanish education in high school. This theory states that language acquisition is a result of our social interactions, and therefore the more we socialize, the more we can learn. Lightbutton and Spada state that learning is thought to occur when an individual interacts with an interlocutor within his or her zone of proximal development. The zone of proximal development, or ZPD, outlines things we are and are not able to do with the help of a more knowledgeable peer. For example, a college-level piece of music would be way outside of a beginner violinist's ZPD, but Twinkle Twinkle Little Star might be just right with the teacher's guidance. With the help of the teacher, I was able to learn a lot of information about the Spanish language. My conclusion is that now that I am no longer being taught Spanish by a more knowledgeable peer, aka the teacher, I'm not finding instances in which my ZPD is being extended. In general, I'm not engaging with any Spanish speakers here in college, and this decreases my social interactions with others and is decreasing my learning and retention of the language as a whole. Lastly, there are macro-social factors that most likely contribute to me losing my Spanish-speaking skills, such as institutional forces and constraints. Saville, Troik, and Bartow state the most obvious form of linguistic social control takes the form of official or unofficial policies that regulate which languages to be used in particular situations. For example, here at Fredonia, speaking English is a requirement in order to be able to understand what is being taught and to do your work because all of the professors teach in English here. You simply would not be able to learn effectively at Fredonia College if you didn't speak English and understand at least a little English. Therefore, there are less Spanish speakers in the college because of these overarching macro-social factors, and therefore less opportunities for me to interact and learn from these individuals. Sadly, I do not have many of the skills I once had regarding the Spanish language. Because a lot of time has passed without me regularly practicing my skills and interacting with others, my retention has greatly decreased. The lack of opportunities to interact with Spanish speakers around me has also equated to a loss of my learning. Thankfully, with the technology we have nowadays, it is easier than ever to start learning a language again. With apps like Duolingo, Babbel, and Rosetta Stone, a little practice a day can really help keep your skills up. This is something I hope to invest time into in the near future. Thank you so much for listening, and here is a list of my sources.